


A Lifetime

by funkyorange



Category: Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-18 18:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20317738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/funkyorange/pseuds/funkyorange
Summary: The major events of Billy's life, from 1976 to 2002.





	A Lifetime

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. Back from a very long time of not writing and I don't even finish a story or series I've got going I write Billy/Alan stuff at like 1am. Yikes.

William ‘Billy’ Brennan is born on the longest day of the year 1976, completely unexpectedly and fighting from the start.

His mother, Kathleen Brennan, had expected twins when she had gone into labour that morning. Anthony ‘Tony’ Brennan (5lbs 6oz) and Timothy ‘Timmy’ Brennan (5lbs 4oz) are born in a labour from sunup to sunset. However, almost ten minutes after Timmy is born, Kathleen delivers another baby; this child wrapped in his umbilical cord, weighing 4lbs 12oz, small and gasping for every breath.

She calls him William, for the uncle she never knew.

Tony and Timmy grow into reserved, well-behaved children (their father, Jeremy Brennan, the mayor of their little town, says they are exactly what his sons should be, polite and kind and studious). Billy grows less, but goes bug hunting, swims in the local creeks and rivers, grows tan from the outdoor sun. Billy smiles and charms with roguish abandon, and doesn’t touch a book until he’s seven and realises that the little lizards and newts he tries to collect and bring home come from big lizards. He throws himself into dinosaurs and never looks back.

When Timmy (“It’s Tim now, Timmy sounds like a child”) is sixteen, he brings home a girl. Her name’s Lucy and she curls her blonde hair and wears pleated skirts, and she doesn’t swear or listen to Nirvana. In their parents’ eyes, perfect.  
Tony, however, brings home ‘call-me-Lee’ who listens to grunge, swears like a trooper, and has the tightest hip-huggers Billy’s ever seen. Their parents hate her, and when Tony spends money for a car on a promise ring, it’s the first time he’s ever been grounded longer than a week.  
Billy brings nobody home, but he does kiss a boy named Bob under the bleachers, shotguns weed with him, and falls a little in love with the shape of another man’s hands on his hips. 

College; Tim learns all about the human body, wanting to be a doctor, and marries Lucy. Tony wants to be a history teacher, and breaks up with Lee.  
Billy takes the money his dad gives him, buys a car, postpones starting college for a year, and takes off.  
He goes wherever he can- skiing and surfing, mountain climbing and to the Grand Canyon, meeting boys and kissing boys and just once kissing a girl, just to make sure (he’s sure), gaining scars and breaking hearts and listening to local folklore and wishing on shooting stars.  
He wraps up his trip by laying on the sand of an empty beach, watching the sea meet the stars and almost praying for college to be as good as this.

It isn’t.  
He stays anyway.

By the time Tim is a father twice over and Tony has married a girl named Charlotte, who is pretty and perky and has never met Billy, and the Christmas cards have stopped coming and the phone-calls have petered away to twice a year (Christmas and birthdays), Billy has fallen in love with the most crotchety, wonderful man he has ever met.  
Doctor Alan Grant has seen dinosaurs. He’s been digging for them since before Billy started college. He’s a bit of a bastard who laughs when newbies hate the heat, who eats exactly two things whilst on site (homemade chilli and cornbread, and steak from a local bar), and if anyone touches his car radio so help them God, and he wears a hat all of the time, sometimes even indoors, and Billy is utterly in love with him.  
He doesn’t dare make a move, even when the older man starts talking to him, but sometimes their eyes catch and hold, or Alan slings his arm around Billy’s back in their booth at JJ’s bar, or Alan sits with Billy when neither of them can sleep and they watch the stars together, cold but so very warm under the desert moon. 

Twenty-five years old, and Billy still hasn’t found exactly what he’s looking for (he knows it’s Alan, with him digging and cooking and fucking and laughing and living) but he’s so close he can taste it.  
He gets drunk with the undergrads even though he shouldn’t, and he calls his family.  
He comes out to his mom.  
She tells him she’ll pray for him, and until he’s come to his senses not to call again. She cries.  
So does he.

Two weeks later and Alan leaves in his truck to go for talks all around the lecture circuit, because he prefers to drive if he can (taking bones on a plane is a hassle) and the site feels more empty than it ever has, more so than when they’ve boxed it all up and left. He’s in charge, with Alan gone, and he can’t help but love and despise it. He orders new equipment, because Alan’s a troglodyte, but he also deals with Too Many People (one way learning politics at his father’s knee has helped him in life). He fields a call from the director of the museum they’re going to be donating the skeletons to when they’re done, and talks nicely to potential investors (Alan doesn’t know it, but Lex Murphy is a huge part of the team that keeps them digging year after year, and it’s always a delight to talk to her about Alan), and occasionally, every few days, he’ll get a call from Alan himself. They talk about the weather (hot), the dig’s funds (drying up), and the university talks (with questions focused on Jurassic Park).  
They never mean to, but always end up talking for around half an hour. If he’s not talking to Billy, Alan’s always done talking in ten minutes.

Fifteen days, and Mr and Mrs Kirby, the billionaires, have terrible poker faces.  
It’s the second thing his father has helped with, teaching him to spot a liar a mile away. But Alan’s buying it, even if he’s refusing, and Billy knows it’s selfish and wrong to want to bring Alan back to the place that traumatised him, but as much as he loves Alan, he’s accepted and made peace with the fact that nothing will ever happen between them.  
He could, however, see real life dinosaurs, something he’s wanted since he opened that first book and saw Tyrannosaurus rex staring back at him from the page, mouth wide and filled with huge, curved teeth. The fact they’re getting paid for it makes it so much sweeter; he can see summers with Alan stretching out further than he can think, finishing his doctorate and being just friends and maybe, maybe, asking to be more than that.

At twenty-five years old and one month, Billy Brennan watches the love of his life be knocked out by a silent man with sunglasses, and as he watches the plane’s decent into an island filled with dinosaurs, he realises he’s made the biggest mistake of his life.


End file.
